


Bring It On Home

by elle_stone



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Minor background Miller/Jackson, Summer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-06
Updated: 2018-10-06
Packaged: 2019-07-27 08:41:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16215491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elle_stone/pseuds/elle_stone
Summary: Their first kiss is out by the old railroad station, while they’re up to their ankles in weeds, right before it starts to rain; their second in her kitchen, by the sink; their third on Miller's back porch, standing on the top step leading into the yard—after that, Clarke starts to lose count.While working his summer job, helping with the repairs to Police Chief Miller’s house, Bellamy meets the Police Chief’s son and his best friend, with whom he becomes increasingly entangled in the last weeks before he leaves for college.Finalist for Best Underrated One Shot in the Bellarke Fan Work Awards 2018.





	Bring It On Home

**Author's Note:**

> BFF Fill for the prompt: "Hi I have a prompt: Modernverse AU with either Clarke and Murphy or Clarke and Miller as super close friends! I know it’s super general and I honestly don’t care what happens in the fic but I love both those dynamics and I don’t see it enough! Thank you!" requested by anonymous. (I went with Miller & Clarke, although I agree anon, these are both underrated dynamics.)
> 
> A note on the header titles/links:
> 
> Each section of this fic is a semi-stand alone scene with its own feel and its own inspiration: sometimes a photograph, sometimes a song, sometimes a word, etc. All but one of the headers is a link to whatever inspired the scene.
> 
> Section 3 ("I liked my house...") is a quotation from Shirley Jackson's _We Have Always Lived in the Castle_ (page 15 of the Penguin Orange Collection edition).
> 
> Most of the rest of the links are to posts on one of my tumblrs (my main @kinetic-elaboration or my writing blog @manuscripts-dont-burn), but I am not trying to take credit for any of the photographs/prompts/etc. None of them are mine. I just want to ensure that the links will remain active indefinitely.
> 
> Four sections are links to songs on youtube. Those links might break but you can look for the songs yourself if you're curious. "The Last Lie I Told" is by Saves the Day; "Hey, Did I Do You Wrong?" is by San Cisco; "When I'm With You" is by Best Coast; and "Bring It On Home" is by Led Zeppelin.
> 
> "Hey, Did I Do You Wrong?" was a summery inspiration suggestion by eosdawns on tumblr.

**[The Victorian houses in the nice part of town ](http://kinetic-elaboration.tumblr.com/post/121749873826/jacindaelena-atlanta) **

His mother's ex-boyfriend gets Bellamy a summer job on his construction crew, fixing up the Police Chief's house. From what Bellamy can see, it doesn't need much fixing. But it's getting a new roof anyway, and a new coat of paint, and a remodeled kitchen, and he's getting paid by the hour, so he can't complain. The job starts at the beginning of June, a week after he graduates from high school, eleven weeks before he leaves for NYU.  

A little before noon on his first day, he takes his thermos of coffee out to the sidewalk across the street from the house, sits down and slings his arms around his bent knees. He tilts his head back and takes in the angle of the sun, nearly directly above him and washing out the sky to a blue so pale it's almost white. A high breeze rustles through the leaves on the trees. The clouds above, thin and wispy streaks of white, pull to pieces and drift free. 

Bellamy doesn't make it often to this part of town: the nice part, the Victorian houses up in the hills, with their wraparound porches and real shutters, most of them three stories tall. Later, the sun will move toward the horizon and the leaves from the trees will throw shapes and patterns on the mint green and dark yellow and off-white of the housefronts, and Bellamy, standing on the front porch of Captain Miller's house, will see this perfect angle of the light and feel something, some weight perhaps that was dragging him down, come loose in his chest and fall away. There will be sweat on the bridge of his nose and on his forehead, and a slight ache in his back, from doing work he isn't used to, and his feet will feel too large in their shoes. 

Right now, though, he's unaware of that handful of seconds but only of the birdsong from the trees and the first scorch of summer sun, and he's thinking about the rest of his coffee break and the rest of his day. He takes another long drink. He's in the in-between time now, not a student anymore or yet again, still living in his mother's house on the other side of town, with the creaky back step and his sister's music always blaring too loud from behind her closed door. He grinds his heel down on a stray bit of stone and listens to it crunch, feels the slide and scrape of it against the pavement through the sole of his boot. 

What he does not know is that the weight is already coming loose. It will fall in the afternoon as he stands on the porch and watches the Mayor's daughter, who lives across the street, as she bikes home late from her last day of school. She's wearing the light blue button-down shirt and plaid skirt of her fancy private school, her backpack, a dark blue, on her back. The sun raises yellow-white highlights in her hair. And she's laughing. She's riding slow so the boy walking next to her can keep up, and so she passes by him like a movie played in slow motion: a moment, like the shadows that in their angle signal the ending of his day, that will burn into his brain. When she stops her bike and dismounts, she turns to look at him, and before he knows what he's doing, he raises his hand at her and smiles.  

She smiles back. That's how it starts. 

* 

**[Paralian; Aubade; Sabaism ](http://manuscripts-dont-burn.tumblr.com/post/111565511762/rare-words) **

Clarke closes the window on the noise across the street, but first, she sticks out her head for one last look. From her attic window, she has a bird's eyes view of the whole neighborhood, a view that lets her feel like a wizard in a castle, up in the high tower, surveying her domain. She sees the sidewalks and the kids riding their bikes and skateboards and the people walking their dogs, mowing their lawns, planting their flowers. She takes in the trees, which grow a riot of shiny green leaves every spring, are so thick in the summer they blot out parts of the houses across the street, and which in the fall form a multi-colored landscape of harvest colors, as they wave and shake in the strong winds and then, slowly, detach and drift to the ground. In the winter the street is quiet and the light is always low with gloom, and the tree branches rattle and tap against windowpanes, bare and black silhouettes against the gray. 

Because of this view, the attic has always been her favorite part of her house, even before she and Miller took it over as their own. 

Miller's house, directly opposite Clarke's, is the cause of the commotion, which she can hear in hollow echoes and thuds even with the window safely closed. His father called it _minor construction_. It sounds like they're tearing the place down.  

With the window closed, the stuffy high-heat of the air presses too close, so Clarke jumps over an obstacle course of pillows and books and old mugs left on the floor to turn on their old standing fan. It rattles unnervingly as it first starts to spin. The corners of Clarke's half-finished paintings, left on the table to be out of the way and weighted down safely with the books Miller isn't reading, fly and fall again in a steady rhythm as the artificial breeze passes them by. 

"What about this one?" Miller asks, as Clarke jumps the corner of the mattress, where he's sprawled on his back on a diagonal, holding a hardback above his head. "Paralian. One who lives by the sea." 

Clarke reaches her easel—the canvas on it is completely blank—and pivots on her heel again, to face him. She considers. 

"It's a good one," she answers, but slowly, not quite convinced. 

Miller brings his arms down, rests the book on his chest. "But you're not brimming with inspiration." 

"It's hard to think with all that noise from _someone's_ house." 

"You can barely even hear it," he counters, and Clarke turns away again. She picks up her paintbrush and twirls it around in her fingers. She can feel Miller watching her, and she can hear, muffled, the sound of tools and wood and large men shouting. She's picturing the boy with the black hair, the one about their age, who at the moment is standing on the roof of the Millers' porch, painting the front of the house a more upbeat shade of green— 

"I can hear it," she answers. 

Behind her, Miller picks up his book again, and hums. Some other time, he'd press the point. Some other time, he will. But he's not always in the mood for a challenge, and Clarke knows him well enough to know what is capitulation, and what is merely a conversational pause. Pages flip. 

"I'd like to live by the sea," she says, setting her paintbrush down again, and walking to her desk, where she keeps her collection of paints. This is just something to say, not a thought to which she's given great consideration. 

"Okay," Miller answers. "One more year here, then let’s skip college and buy a house next to the ocean. You support us by painting. I'll learn to surf." 

" _You'll_ support us by writing and I'll hang out in art museums all day.” 

"I don't write. Shut up." 

"Become a famous actor to pay the rent. I’ll sit on the shore and sketch inscrutable waves." 

"I'm warning you, Griffin," he growls, not mean, and she keeps her back to him and grins, her fingers tracing across her collection of blues. A house by the sea. All right, that is a vision; a group of people who live by the sea, and they will join: peaceful people attuned to the liminal space between ocean and shore. 

"Or this one," Miller says, into the unspooling silence, the creak and rattle of the fan as it turns. "Aubade. A morning love song. The opposite of a serenade." 

"Aubade," Clarke repeats. Somehow it doesn't have the same ring, but visions of pink-orange sunrises and soft sweet rhythms of color bloom in her mind, and she's even more at peace than she was by the sea. 

"Something for you to sing for Bellamy," Miller adds, which breaks the spell. 

Clarke's brow furrows, and her expression becomes pinched and small as she turns back to him. "Now who needs to shut the fuck up?" 

Miller shrugs and lets his book fall backward, still held open, onto his chest. "You brought him lemonade yesterday." 

"I was being nice," she answers, but the words come out less a defense than a threat. 

"You were making an excuse to talk to him. And then you did. For fifteen minutes." 

Clarke quirks an eyebrow. "Jealous?" 

Miller snorts and flips his book back up. "Observant." 

"Asshole." 

"In denial." 

Not at all. She knows that Bellamy has a reluctant, maybe shy, sort of smile, that he's not from her school, that he carries an eclectic set of books in the front seat of his truck. She stood outside with him yesterday, bumped her hip against the hot black steel of his passenger side door, and snooped in through the window as he talked. He was telling her about the weekend he'd be spending fixing up his mother's house, talking about the place as if he'd already left it, as if he didn't consider his home to be his home anymore. She'd wanted to take him inside. Just a flash of sudden want, surprising and startling and clear. 

He told her that her neighborhood was nice, as if it pained him to say it. She asked him about where he lived and he withdrew, a little cold; she bit the corner of her lip and pulled the conversation back. She stared at his hand, resting on the handle of the car door, waiting, but in no hurry, to leave. 

"Give me another one," she says, now, and Miller sighs, long-suffering, and does not answer for a long while. 

Clarke's been watching him, Bellamy, noticing him again and again, ever since she first saw him. She was riding home from school on the last day of junior year, and he was standing on Miller’s porch, watching her. 

"Sabaism," Miller says. "The worship of stars, or the spirits in stars." 

Clarke smiles. "I like it," she answers. "Sounds like us." 

* 

**“I liked my house on the moon, and I put a fireplace in it, and a garden outside… Things on the moon were very bright, and odd colors; my little house would be blue.”**

By some strange, uncertain, wandering route, they have found themselves talking about life on the moon. 

In the late afternoon, Bellamy was conscripted to carry a large, red beanbag chair from Miller's basement, up to Clarke's attic, and now he's lying on it. He is almost horizontal, his vertebrae realigned by its surprising valleys and hills. He is alight. This is a new plane: his boots kicked off toward the baseboards and his bare toes curling and his arms stretched out above his head until his fingertips hit the floor. Then he lets them fall forward again. 

"Told you it was worth bringing up here," Miller says. He's talking to Clarke but Bellamy hums, low, in assent. He was the one who hauled it up the stairs, after all, and the one who could most easily dispute its worth. 

Clarke is perched on the windowsill at the front of the room, one leg up and bent for her sketchbook to lean on, the low late-day sun shining in oranges and yellow-golds around her. Her hair is down and flows over her shoulders. For a while, they were quiet, and then she asked Miller to tell her the word again, and he said, "Sabaism," and, "the worship of stars," and that's how they start their journey to the moon. 

"First just think of the view," Bellamy murmurs. "From the moon, you can see all of the Earth." 

"That sounds like worship of the Earth," Miller answers. "We can do that from here." 

"And this isn’t about what we know," Clarke adds. "It's about what we don't know." 

Bellamy doesn't know what that means but already he's gaining some fluency in the odd language they seem to speak with each other, sometimes: the secrets they know, but don't realize are secrets. When they climbed up the stairs to the attic, Miller and Clarke both jumped over the fifth step from the bottom. Bellamy let his full weight fall upon it and it screeched out loud and high beneath his heel. Old houses are old houses, he thought, even in the nice part of town. "Should have warned you about that," Clarke said, not sounding sorry. 

He uses his heels as a lever to roll his whole body back, arching his spine against the beanbag's shifting weight. 

"So what's the difference," he asks, “between worshiping the Earth and the stars, or the moon?" 

Clarke hums. They've turned off the fan and opened the window and the air is hot, and clear, and close. He can hear her pencil shading across the page.  

"It's everything you cannot yet imagine," she says. "Appreciating the Earth is focusing in on what you could know, but have not bothered to know. And worshiping the stars is like time travel, the distances, the past that still shines in the present. And the moon is the other world, where you need to stretch your imagination, to figure out how things might be." 

Miller hauls himself up into a sitting position and leans back against the table leg. Above him are a series of landscapes and abstracts and portraits that Bellamy would like to examine, but has not. "I don't know if that's really deep," Miller's saying. "Or just really pretentious." 

"Little of both," Clarke says, unbothered, and does not look up. 

"Okay," Bellamy says. "Then how do we live on the moon?" 

To himself, he thinks: _like this_ , because he likes this. A long wooden room with several bookshelves on the wall, and the books in no particular order. Half-finished and mostly-finished art on the tables and leaning against the walls. Windows through which broad beams of light bound in, filtered into emerald shades by the leaves of the trees.  

"Like kings," Miller answers, grinning. 

"In peace," Clarke answers. "Aware of but above the Earth. We'll plant gardens." 

"And not know what will grow until it grows," Bellamy says. "Moon vegetables." 

"Paint in moon colors," Clarke says. 

And Miller, "Speak in moon languages." 

Bellamy smiles up at the ceiling. He looks at Miller first, and then, carefully, as if in doing so he is pressing against the boundaries of decency, stretching the rules by which he is allowed entrance to this moon world, at Clarke. Her eyebrows have narrowed in over her eyes and her hair has fallen over her face. She pushes it back behind her ear. The twilight shadows are creeping in, but she seems radiant in the dusk and he knows—he knows this is silly; he's too caught up in their fantasies. He's thinking about certain strains of happiness he cannot have.  

Maybe if they really did live on the moon. 

She sets her pencil down, looks up. "Understand moon concepts," she says, to no one in particular, and then, smiling just at the corner of her mouth, slides her gaze to Miller, to see what he thinks. 

* 

**[The Last Lie I Told ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0MYCxtZ9iY) **

The last Saturday in June, Bellamy drives his truck out to the high school again, a time traveler, and parks in his usual spot out by the science wing. There are no other cars in the lot, and no other people. The slam of the driver's side door as he climbs out thuds through the night air, disruptive and hollow. He climbs up onto the hood and leans back against the windshield, his arms up behind his head, and stares up at the darkened floodlights above the stadium.  

Above them, a clear night: black sky and stars. The air is soft and warm and it calms him. 

He could stay out here all night. Maybe he will. His mother won't miss him. Octavia, maybe, but she's withdrawing from him anyway, because she's fourteen, or because he's about to leave her and she thinks this is his due, he doesn't know. For now, it's nice to be alone. His house feels small but in the parking lot by himself, hood still hot from the engine, and the view above him infinite, he is the one who is small. So small he might be utterly invisible, meaningless from the point of view of the moon. As he should be. 

He thinks over yesterday again. End of his shift and about to go home. He'd been walking around the house, in the narrow strip of grass between the Millers' place and their neighbor's lawn, and he’d run into Clarke, and for a moment they'd been too close and his heart had jumped into his throat and stilled there. He’d felt too big for his skin, trapped and lurching in a body he did not remember how to control.  

She has that effect on him because she's knife-sharp and always saying just what's on her mind, which makes him feel like a giant of secrets.  

Or is he reading her wrong? 

"Sorry," he said, and stepped back because he could not step to the side, there was no room with the overgrown hedgerow creeping in on them and the side of the house glistening with still-wet paint.  

She'd made some echo of apology but did not move out of the way, put a hand on his arm instead, and looked up at him, serious and searching. What could she read in the details of his face? Guilt? Fear? 

"She has a boyfriend," he says, to the sky, and the outlines of the rising bleacher seats. "A really cool boyfriend." 

"Hey, it's all right," she said, while in his head he was playing through fantasies of kissing her, as if that were a thing, something he could just do, except that she's a moon goddess, distant and above him, her domain the attic room where he visits sometimes, a stranger, a guest. But if he let his hand rest on her cheek, if she stood on her toes. Instead she's watching him and saying it's all right, until they carefully maneuver themselves free, and now he's listening to late evening silence and trying to pick up some strands of her voice in his memory, not sure if he's wallowing in or swallowing down guilt. 

His phone buzzes in his pocket and he fumbles for it, mostly just to make it shut up. 

_Hey u coming over tonight?_

From Miller. 

_Thinking maybe the movies?_

Bellamy's thumbs hover over the screen, hesitation in his joints until he types out, slowly: _I don't think I'll make it tonight._

He's not sure what this feeling is, this sickness, this fever. This sense he's pulling back too late. The memory of her hand lingering on his arm. The suspicion of the secrets she's not sharing. A lingering sour taste like fear on the back of his tongue. 

* 

**[Fireworks ](http://kinetic-elaboration.tumblr.com/post/176121326205) **

On the Fourth of July, there are no clouds. The sun picks out crystalline-bright patterns across the gently curving waters of the lake, sharp enough to burn Clarke's eyes, until she remembers the sunglasses she's left balanced on top of her head. She flips them down. Behind her, a local band is playing patriotic tunes, but the strong wind scatters the notes like stones skipped across water, and she's basking in the fragments: Miller on one side of her, Bellamy on the other, the high days of summer opening wide at her feet. 

"So," she says, all of a sudden, and takes a long pull of her lemonade through her straw. She rattles the ice cubes against the plastic side of her cup. "The plan. What are we doing today?" 

"The usual?" Miller asks. He's eating a hot dog with an indecent amount of relish; every time he takes a bite, it escapes around the edges and over his fingers, so he has to pick up the excess bits with his tongue. 

Clarke hums, considering, assenting, and Bellamy leans out farther over the rail. The wind blows through his hair. He doesn’t have shades so he squints into the bright light. 

"New guy here," he reminds them. "I don't know what the usual is." 

"We were getting to that," Miller answers. 

Bellamy snorts, unconvinced. 

"The usual is that we hang out here until we get bored, then walk to my house and marathon Star Wars until it's time to walk back for the fireworks," Clarke fills in. 

Bellamy slides his gaze back to them again, a funny little quirk at his eyebrows. Clarke wants to lean up on her toes and kiss it. She would not even have to stretch, she thinks, because he's bending down with his elbows on the top bar of the guard rail that keeps the springy-green park grass from falling into the sea—the lake, their little lake—and it makes him less than her height, and so close. 

"Why Star Wars?" 

"Because when we were little, it used to air on TV every Fourth of July, for some reason," Miller answers. A spot of relish escapes him and falls at his feet. "The original trilogy. And we'd watch it because there was nothing else on." 

"Sort of became a tradition," Clarke says. "Anyway, you're welcome to join."  

She tilts her lemonade toward him for emphasis. He grabs for it, and she moves it away again. Bellamy pretends to be insulted. 

"Yeah," he says, then, shrugging and looking between them. "Sounds like fun. If you're sure I won't be—" 

"We invited you.” Miller cuts him off with a sharp look, but he looks a little less serious when he pops the last of his hot dog in his mouth. "So don't argue." 

Bellamy holds up his hands. "All right, yeah. I haven't seen the fireworks in a long time, anyway. It'll be fun." 

Still he sounds like something's holding him back. Clarke feels it, the pull of it, when she looks at the stiff set of his shoulders, when she tries to catch his eye but he looks away. Miller tells them he's off for more food, and then they're alone. The chatter of the holiday crowd seems to recede like the tide from the shore; it leaves them in a hollow of silence. Clarke isn't sure that she knows what to say. She looks down, watches Bellamy's foot kick against the concrete below the railing, looks up at his profile as he stares out at the water again. Out at that excess of blue. That great expanse of shine and blue. 

"You and Miller have a good relationship," he says, which is not Clarke was expecting him to say. 

"Sure," she answers slowly. She taps her straw against her teeth. "We've known each other a long time." 

"How long have you been dating?" Bellamy asks the lake. Like he's been waiting a long time to ask this. Like he's been rehearsing the words. Clarke almost chokes on her lemonade. 

When she's done coughing, Bellamy's concerned hand still on her back, rubbing circles even when the fit has passed, she looks up at him, and grins, sly, gently mocking. "You think Miller's my boyfriend?" 

"Well—yeah." He drops his hand. There is a slight pink tinging about his cheeks and the tips of his ears.  

"You’ve thought that this whole time?" 

Bellamy sticks his hands deep in his pockets and curls his shoulders up. "Yeah.” 

"He's not. I mean—I don't have a boyfriend." She pauses a moment, glancing back over her shoulder, where Miller is assaulting another hot dog with relish. "He does, though," she adds. 

She can imagine Bellamy’s eyes widening, in that moment of surprised silence before he clears his throat and asks, “He does…?” 

"Yeah. A boyfriend starting pre-med in the fall, though, so." She shrugs and turns back to him. "We'll see how that goes, I guess." Another sip of her lemonade, long, the last of the liquid rattling up through the straw; the ice cubes clank and clatter together, too loudly for the way he is staring at her. It takes her a moment, then she remembers that he is leaving too. So maybe that unreadable look in his eye is sadness, or embarrassment, or regret. 

She's the one who should be embarrassed, now. "Not that long distance relationships can't work, of course." 

"Yeah, of course," Bellamy echoes. He's already looking over her shoulder, though; Miller is back, and Clarke has no time to parse out the meaning in Bellamy's tone. 

She'll think about it later, after they've spread her old blanket on the grass and settled down to stare up at the sky, awaiting the bursting patterns of red and blue and white light. She's in the middle again: Miller to her left and Bellamy on the right. She can feel their arms pressing against her arms. Miller isn't touchy and neither is she but sometimes when they were younger they'd hold hands during the fireworks, little kid magic to protect against the deep bone-trembling booms, and sometimes they still do. Just for old time's sake. 

This year she's wondering about that look on Bellamy's face, a look that might have been longing, or revelation, or wonder, and about the moments sometimes when he thinks she's not watching and she catches him watching her, and she’s thinking not at all about the end of the summer, which seems infinite eons away.  

This year she keeps her hands to herself. 

* 

**[Forks of lightning in an early evening sky ](http://kinetic-elaboration.tumblr.com/post/165308376792/lessthanfocusedagain-light-in-august-ii) **

Been waiting a long time. 

Something will break soon. Maybe the sky. 

Miller tilts his head back, rests his elbows behind him on the concrete steps, which are cold and rough and scrape against his skin, plants his feet in the gravel and the weeds, and stares at the sky. Immediately above him, it's the rich-gray blue of early dusk, and at the far edge, a yellowing purple like bruised plums. 

The temperature's been crawling up for days now, the air thick and humid, stifling in the afternoons when the day gathers up on itself and he pictures himself melting. Mist rising up from the morning grass. New asphalt smell on Main Street, where the first round of summer construction is complete. Sun burning through clouds and sweat gathering slick between his shoulder blades and on his neck. 

Work on the house has slowed as the whole town wilts and Bellamy, in his time off, shows up more in the attic, scanning Miller's bookshelves, sharing historical trivia, lying on his back on the wooden floor counting ceiling beams. He and Clarke flirt mercilessly. When he leaves Clarke denies it. For them perhaps the tension is exciting, the sick-thrilling twist of stomach knots and sweating palms and almosts, but Miller never knows what to do with himself when they stand too close to each other by the window, make excuses to touch, when one of them makes a joke that isn't funny and the other one smiles in a sweet-sad, indulgent way, utterly charmed. He keeps his face hidden behind his books. 

Heat rises. Sometimes he and Bellamy just read while Clarke works on her painting of the stars, which she figures as objects of awe: beautiful abstract shapes of the far distance. Miller is afraid to move, like the component pieces of him will fall apart if he does, like something must fall apart and he, not knowing what it will be, must force himself at least to keep his form. 

Bellamy suggests they ride out to the old train station, which is on the far side of town and feels distant and abandoned and half-wild. Distant from everything, certainly from home. Miller lends Bellamy his dad's bike and before they've gone even halfway, they've fallen into silence. It's hard to breathe. The air is too thick with rain that will not fall. 

Gotta end sometime. 

Clarke and Bellamy are balancing on the railroad tracks, walking in opposite directions, heading toward each other. Tall meadow grasses have grown up and over and through the rails. Overgrown trees hinting at the edges of a wilderness surround them, and the station is locked up, and has been for years. Miller's waiting on the front step for the purple in the sky to seep out, to spill out over them. 

The stillness in the air and the darkness of the sky make the hour feel like evening, though it's barely late afternoon. An any-time, and no-time. Clarke's stretched her arms out to either side for balance, straight out and fingers pointed; they waver sometimes up to the right or down to the left, like airplane wings.  

She and Miller used to play tag in her backyard, far into the summer evenings. Like all their games, it was just an excuse to run around. Feels like it was a long time ago. 

She looks up now just in time to see that Bellamy, who has stilled almost to a halt, is all but in front of her, and she seems surprised for a moment although, of course, this was the point. The inevitable end of the road they have set themselves upon. Miller is glad they have reached it. He is glad for the sudden sharp awareness in her eyes, which he can read, he thinks, better than Bellamy can. Bellamy's expression softens and his arms fall and he looks about to lose his balance, just from the sight of the scared and open honesty on her face. 

Far off by the horizon, a zagging fork of lightning cracks the sky. It does not rain.  

Clarke loses her balance and slips off the edge of the track; Bellamy catches her; Miller's too far away to hear but it looks like he's asking her if she's all right. He sees her nodding. She's got her hands gripping Bellamy's forearms and even though she's fine, she doesn't let go. She still looks shaken.  

Bellamy jumps off the track and into the weeds with her. This time a boom of thunder sounds, and Miller breathes deep of the heat-thick and stifling air, knowing it will break soon, it must break. Lightning again, jumping across the clouds. In the flare of it, he almost misses them leaning into each other, slowly, magnetically. He looks away and when he looks back they're kissing, tableau-still, like they've been cursed into statues, like they're frozen in shock. 

Clarke shakes her head, fast, pulling herself from the dream as she pulls away. He wants to tell her _don't be stupid_. _Don't ruin this, don't push him away_. But Bellamy's hands are wrapped around her wrists and he's bowed his head down to stare at their feet, not forcing, not asking, and Miller sees him and knows. The storm that will split up the oppressive, breathless evening is close. Inevitable, and close. Clarke takes another step forward and lets her head rest on his chest, and Bellamy wraps an arm around her, and doesn't let go. 

* 

**[A series of kisses ](http://manuscripts-dont-burn.tumblr.com/post/172120929592/fictional-kiss-prompts) **

Their first kiss is out by the old railroad station, while they’re up to their ankles in weeds, right before it starts to rain; their second in her kitchen, by the sink; their third on Miller's back porch, standing on the top step leading into the yard—after that, Clarke starts to lose count. 

Two days after the first kiss, it's still raining. She goes downstairs for a glass of water, and Bellamy comes with her. He doesn't say why, but Miller's been watching them, like he watches people at the other lunch tables at school or the other kids in class, watching like he's waiting, like he's in no hurry to speak, and Clarke thinks maybe Bellamy doesn't want a confrontation. Maybe, like her, he's thinking about biking home in the rain to the distant booms of thunder, soaked through to the skin, the breaking apart of the sky at last cooling the air but that same fearful, tense, yearning feeling still inside. He stands too close as she stands by the sink, filling her glass with filtered water from the pitcher, watching the water and wondering if he's watching her, or the streaks of rain gliding down the window, obscuring the view of the garden and the yard.  

"It feels like we could be anywhere," she says. What she means is, _I want to kiss you again_. When she looks up, Bellamy is frowning at her, like she's said something strange or in a foreign tongue. She sets the water pitcher down and the glass next to it. She's not sure what to do with her hands. She tries again: "I didn't think you'd come over today." 

"Because of the weather?" 

"Because of Saturday." 

She says it cool and steady and watches his face, but he just shrugs.  

"I don't regret it," he says, after a moment. "So why would I run away?" 

Then she’s taking a deep breath and stepping forward, reaching up to grab his face between her hands, and his hands are on her waist, pulling her close. Their noses bump before they kiss. He crowds her back against the counter; she feels the edge of the sink dig into the space just above her hips. She pushes back and turns them around until Bellamy crashes into the dish rack and the glasses rattle—their first kiss was tentative and uncertain but not this one, and she feels okay smiling into his mouth as he pulls away just enough to ask: "Did something break?" 

Clarke shakes her head. "No, you're good." The last word slides into the next kiss, just as insistent and as needy as the last; they're each afraid to let the other go. She can barely catch her breath. Bellamy walks her backward and her ankle cracks against the table leg and she wonders _what are we doing?_ and does not care. Then _where are we going?_ and does not care. Wandering lost and uncertain, needing only each other, needing only his tongue pressed hot into her mouth and his arms around her, maybe he'll lift her onto the counter, but she ends up turning him around instead and pressing him against the fridge, where the magnet holding up the family calendar crashes to the floor, and they pull apart at last, unaccountably surprised.  

For a long while, Clarke hears only the gentle pattern of the rain, easing up now, and sees only Bellamy's eyes, soft and gentle and, she thinks, almost relieved. He's breathing hard and she feels it, his chest pressing in steady rhythms against her chest. 

"We should..." he starts, and she nods, and flicks her gaze down and back up.  

"Yeah. Back upstairs?" 

He squeezes her hand as she pulls away. 

The next time, it's easier; it's his break and the rest of the crew are inside, working on the kitchen that looks like it's been turned inside out and upside down, the blinds closed to keep out the hard yellow light of the sun, and Miller's at her house, making lunch in what he calls a "less skeletal room." Clarke crosses the street with a mug of coffee as her excuse. Runoff from the storm rushes loud in the gutters.  

Bellamy barely touches the coffee. Instead, he leaves it balanced on the porch railing and wraps his arms around her, and she slings her arms around his shoulders and nudges her nose against his nose. They're so close she doesn't quite know where to put her feet, so they don’t get in the way of his feet. She feels his body close against her body, a lovely closeness, the solidity of him almost as pleasant as the way he leans in slowly, as the way he pulls her up to her toes just before they kiss. She feels like he's breathing her in. She's stretched and taut; she's arching up into him. Her body finds new ways to fit with his body, and each inhale and exhale matches the rhythm of their tiny movements like music. 

His hands slide down her back, fingers teasing at the edge of her t-shirt. Makes her heart pound. Small circles that she wishes could be formed against bare skin. 

When she pulls away, she keeps her eyes closed, and listens to the work of her own lungs. She's curling the ends of Bellamy's hair absently around her fingertips. She feels him bump his nose against her nose.  

Later, they find small moments: meeting on the stairs up to the attic, in the shade of the narrow strip of grass by the side of Miller's house, on her front steps—small moments and small kisses, reminders like the way he sometimes holds her hand even when they're not alone. They don't talk about any of it but one night when Miller's out with his boyfriend and the full moon shines in through the attic window, they light candles and he sits on the beanbag chair and she sits in his lap, and they melt against each other. They fall over and against each other, relearn the boundaries of each other. 

The only sounds are the rickety uneven rhythm of the fan and the way Bellamy hums sometimes, when he kisses behind her ear or down her neck. She can feel the sweat on the back of his neck and through his t-shirt; it's too hot to be this close. He can taste the sweat on her skin as he drags his lips down, catches his teeth against her shoulder, noses against her collarbone as he presses her back against the uneven surface of their chair. 

"Kiss me," she whispers, not aware until she speaks that her voice is rough with disuse and the unsaid. 

He smiles, slides her t-shirt off her shoulder and kisses the spot of newly exposed skin. "I thought I was," he murmurs. 

She corrects him—"Mmm—no—up here—" and pulls him back up to her mouth again. 

* 

**[The Sun Rising ](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44129/the-sun-rising) **

Clarke's room is painted a light blue, closer in shade to the sky than the sea. And yet Bellamy, lying on his back in her bed, warm and lazy in a patch of morning sun, still finds himself thinking about the water. He imagines them lying together on a raft or in the bottom of a boat, out on the lake, watching the clouds. Clarke's half-on top of him, her legs wrapped around him, her head on his chest and her hand, like her hand now, gentle against his side, fingers splayed out over his ribs. They are at the center of the sun's warmth, the center of everything. No one else on the lake, no one else on the shore. They will discuss the intimate details of themselves, without fear. 

Clarke stretches her legs, and he feels the movement, the soft bare skin of her legs against his legs. He knows what that feels like now. And he knows that she wears an oversized school t-shirt to bed (also blue, _Arkadia Academy Archers_ on the back and a quiver of arrows on the front), with a tiny pair of shorts, and her hair down. He knows that she likes to cuddle, that if he wraps his arm around her stomach, she'll pull it tighter and then shift back against him, an insistent little spoon. He knows that she sometimes makes small, unintelligible noises in her sleep. 

He knows he's in this thing deep, though he's not certain he knows what _this_ is. The world outside the room feels as real as the shores out in the distance from their little raft, and that's right enough, and clear: they two, the center of the universe, the only objects of the sun. 

"You've been quiet a long time," Clarke says. Her voice is soft and lazy. She's running the tip of her finger along the arc of his rib. "What's on your mind?" 

Bellamy shrugs. "I'm imagining your parents coming home early," he says. "And your father killing me with his bare hands." 

"Liar," Clarke answers, and sounds like she's smiling. "What are you really thinking?" 

He considers longer, this time. His arm slides down low to link around her waist. Her t-shirt is old and soft, and he'll have to go to work soon, and he doesn't have an extra set of clothes here, and he owes Octavia for covering for him at home, and none of this seems real, and Clarke is so very close. 

"What..." he tries, at last, then stops. Clarke presses a kiss to his chest and then pulls herself up, just enough to rest on top of him and watch him. "What...do you think of me?" 

She raises her eyebrows. "I think you're a nerd," she answers. "But I like your random digressions on history. And your opinions on current events. And how you read almost as fast—almost as fast as anyone." 

"That's not really what I meant." He lifts his hand and tucks a strand of her hair behind her ear. She bites her lip, uncertain, and his throat goes dry. "I meant more—us." 

It's just hard, he does not explain, to say the word _us_. 

"What do I think about us?" she repeats. 

"Yeah." 

"I think... I've never had anyone stay over before. Like this, I mean. Like a boy I'm not just friends with." 

"Like a boy who isn't Miller?" 

She shrugs one shoulder. She won’t quite meet his eye, her gaze flickering instead across his face. "Yeah. So that's a fairly big deal." 

Bellamy nods, and waits, and Clarke slides her hand up his chest and traces her fingertips along the neckline of his t-shirt. He can tell by her expression that she's thinking, by the way she inhales like she's about to speak, then quietly exhales, that she's got indefinite words on the tip of her tongue. 

"I think I'd like to spend the rest of the summer like this," she says. "Together like this." 

Her voice starts to break open on the word _together_. Bellamy tips her chin up and stretches to kiss her, and she easily leans in and kisses him back, slow and soft and sweet. 

"Yeah," he says, when he pulls back. "That's what I want, too." His hands slide down her sides, settle on her back above her hips, a loose embrace. "Just—to be with you. I feel like... a bit like anything could happen." 

That's not quite right, not the right words, not what he's really trying to say, but she smiles like she understands, like some of that same incoherent wanting is blowing about inside her, too. 

* 

**[Hey, Did I Do You Wrong? ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfYf6RIxZ3Y) **

Miller knows that Bellamy and Clarke are together because he isn't an idiot. 

The only time he asked Clarke about it directly, though, she shrugged the question off. But that's Clarke. That's both of them. When he came out to her, the conversation took all of five minutes. She pretended she'd already guessed, and that was it.  

Neither of them has the best vocabulary when it comes to sorting out feelings. At least, not their own. 

Maybe she can't answer him now, because she doesn't have the answers herself. That would be just like the girl Miller's known his whole life, the one who’d never apologize, nor ask for an apology, after a fight, who’d just show up at his door unannounced, ready to get back to the business of being friends. The one who slides around difficult conversations, who looks forward instead of looking back. She doesn’t know exactly what she and Bellamy are. She's just fallen into something she has no interest in giving a name.  

But Miller sees how it is. How she and Bellamy hold hands all the time. How she goes down the stairs alone to meet him when he crosses the street after work, and they don't come back up for a while, and he knows they're making out in the hallway or on the front porch. Even now, Bellamy's sitting in his beanbag chair, Clarke on the floor in front of him, and he's resting his hands on her shoulders while she leans back against his legs. Miller’s sitting at Clarke's work table, sifting through her sketches and drafts. When he turns around without warning, he catches Bellamy pressing a kiss to the top of Clarke's head. It seems more intimate than if he'd caught them fucking. 

He isn't jealous. That isn't what's happening here. Clarke was totally cool when he started seeing Jackson; she gave him a weird, well-meaning version of a pep talk before their first date, and when he got home that night, he texted her before he even took off his coat, and she was ready and waiting to hear every detail he wanted to share. Not just what happened. But what it felt like. He watched the light from her window, a patient, steady glow as he typed out message after message, erased them, tried again: a steady light like Clarke herself. And if she came to him now that's what he'd be, for her. 

But she doesn't. Smooth sailing between them, he guesses. 

The thing is, though, that he never brings Jackson to the attic. They don't hang out, the three of them, together as a group. Clarke barely even knows him. But Bellamy—Miller would say that they're friends. Even though it's awkward now, to be alone with him when Clarke's not in the room. Bellamy tends to go quiet, hangs his head or crosses his arms tight against his chest, like he’s waiting for Miller to threaten him or tell him off. 

Among Clarke's drawings are a few sketches of hands, no more than simple outlines, good because she’s good but absently drawn. Miller looks at them and knows right away whose hands they are. He pictures them together, Clarke's head tilted, Bellamy's whole body tense and still, and both of them quiet, that look of intense concentration in Clarke's eye that she gets when she's thinking. Miller knows it well. He likes to watch her while she’s painting or drawing, always impressed with the way she forms lasting images out of the temporary and the fleeting. That's what he admires in her art, in the concepts of art that they've spun out together in days that seem brittle and old now as dried leaves.  

Weird how it's this image that makes something hollow and sharp poke at his chest.  

He remembers when they were little and they made hand turkeys at the kitchen island at his house, while their parents ran into each other trying to cook too many dishes at once, and the room was hot and loud and smelled like Thanksgiving, the gathering up of the end of the year—the memory flashes in his mind fully formed but brief, just a second during which he forgets where he is, or why. It takes him a moment to remember that the island's been torn up now, along with just about everything else. 

Clarke asks him what he thinks and he shuffles the sketches of the hands to the bottom of the pile. He swivels around in the chair again. "I think you're losing your touch," he says, which is a joke, but it comes out too dull and too mean. Clarke's expression falters. Bellamy's hands slide down her shoulders and rest along her arms, still and at ease, at rest and waiting. 

"I'm kidding," Miller adds, too late. "Aubade is my favorite.” He looks to Bellamy, waits a beat there, not for his benefit but for Clarke’s—then back to her, and lifts the corner of his mouth in a half-smile. “Like I told you it would be." 

* 

**[Suburban sunset ](http://manuscripts-dont-burn.tumblr.com/post/170481640752) **

Clarke looks both ways before she crosses the street, even though the neighborhood is quiet, near-deserted in the warm, soft light of sunset. Miller's spread a blanket out on his front lawn. He has a book with him, unopened, and he's lying back, propped up on his elbows, staring up at the shades of lilac and rose crowding together in the sky. 

"Mind if I sit?" Clarke asks, and he moves over. There was already plenty of room. 

She sits with her knees up to her chest and her arms around her legs, slips out of her shoes and feels the soft, worn fabric of the blanket beneath her soles. On the way down the stairs, she thought of many possible sentences for this moment, but now she remembers none of them. All she can think is that she's missed this, somehow, and that Miller is too quiet, and that his silence doesn't feel like his usual silence. This quiet between them is not is companionable, or pleasant, but cold, like a hollow carved out between them, and she's not sure anymore by who. 

"Not hanging out with Bellamy tonight?" he asks. 

"No." Then, because it must be said: "I wanted to hang out with you." 

Miller makes a low noise, like a scoff, and she looks back and sees him rolling his eyes. "Don't. Don't do that." 

"Do what?" 

"Say things that sound like they're from a script." 

Fair. Clarke shrugs up her shoulders. The air feels soft at this time of day, soft and sweet and easy to breathe in. She thinks for a long moment. "This shouldn't be awkward." 

"You remember when I asked if you were seeing him?" Miller rearranges his arms behind his head. He stretches out his legs so his feet hang off the edge of the blanket, into the too-long lush summer grass. "If you'd told me the truth then, it wouldn't be awkward. You're acting like you're guilty of something." 

"I'm not," she shoots back, then forces herself to draw a breath before she says anything more. She does not like this, speaking without meaning to speak. "We're not. We're not doing anything wrong. We just—" 

"Don't know what you're doing?" 

"Not exactly, no." 

The far-off rose tints of the sky look like fire, fire from a candy-colored otherworld; above them rise mountains of violet cotton candy fluff. She does not like this either: admitting the weight of the unsaid, being wrong. 

"But you are together," Miller says, not a question, and Clarke shrugs up one shoulder. Behind her, he sounds like he's trying not to laugh. "You _are_. I don't care if you are. Except that Bellamy should get over himself. Tell him that. I'm not going to chase him out of your room with a shotgun or whatever he's worried about." 

This makes Clarke laugh, brief but honest, and cover her face with her hands. It's not the image of Miller busting in on them that does it, but the sudden memory of Bellamy's face, that pained and brutally awkward expression on his face, the one she knows Miller is thinking about and yes, that must be exactly what he's imagining when he gets that guilty hang-dog look. And it's funny, too, how both of them are so caught up in worries with no basis in the truth. Overthinking everything, like fools. 

"I'll tell him," she says. "Or—" She reaches down and gives Miller's ankle a squeeze. "You can." 

"All right." 

Clarke unwraps her arms from around her knees and sets her hands back behind her instead, leans back and tilts her head to watch the sunset drift, and drift. 

"So why didn't you just tell me?" Miller asks. 

Clarke considers the question a long moment, starts her answer once and falters, starts again. 

"What are you and Jackson going to do when the summer is over?" she asks. 

"What do you mean?" 

She gives up the effort of holding up her weight and lies down on her back next to him. 

"I mean, are you going to break up?" 

"No. We're going to try to do long-distance. You know me." He tries to smile. "Stubborn." 

"Yeah." 

"So, what—is that it? You and Bellamy won't get together so you can't break up?" 

It sounds stupid. She shrugs, feels the uneven bump of the ground between her shoulder blades. "Not in so many words." 

Miller laughs and knocks the back of his hand against her hand. "That's a terrible plan, Griffin." 

Clarke takes in a deep and shaky breath. She's not sure if she's about to laugh or sigh. "Yeah," she says. "Yeah, I know." 

* 

**[When I’m With You ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDhtJFbwhOQ) **

Clarke slips her bare feet beneath the surface slowly, tentatively. The lake water is cooler than she'd anticipated. It curves and curls in tiny waves around her ankles as she searches out drifting underwater weeds with her toes. The desire to submerge herself deeper and deeper, up past her calves, past her knees, is undeniable, a longing that pulls at her as the waves do. 

Above her, the sun shines warm and bright, makes her feel lazy and slow, like she’s turning gold in the long, slow days of late summer. She drags her feet through the water and feels it rush and pull at her, calling her. 

Bellamy's sitting behind her with his legs out to either side of her, his arms around her. He'd been surprised to see her in a skirt when he showed up at her house, the late morning sliding easily into early afternoon, and she'd grinned, and kissed his cheek, and offered no explanation at all. She and Miller didn't tell him that they were going to the lake. Now he's rolled up the bottoms of his jeans and they're still getting wet, but that's okay. Later, they'll climb off the rocks and walk along the sandy part of the shoreline and wade in the lowest parts of the water, splash at each other aimlessly, dry quickly in the sun. 

Miller's lounging on the next rock over, kicking his feet through the water in a haphazard rhythm, his eyes closed and his face upturned to the sun. 

"It's not the beach," he'd said, as they edged down the grassy slope to the lake's edge. "But it's close enough." 

Clarke's never been to the real beach, to the ocean, to the edge of the hard crashing waves that roll up over the sand and splash up her ankles and legs and tug at her, her feet planted in the sand, her balance precarious as the water pulls at her, tries to topple her. But she's imagined it. Or the hard, high rocky crags of an English shore, up above the violence of a stormy sea, with her easel, and her hair whipping around her in the wind. 

There's no wind today. Hardly even a breeze, but when the stillness is interrupted by even the smallest gust, she lets her eyelids flutter closed and leans into it, leans after it. 

Bellamy reaches for her hands and plays with her fingers. He starts to tell them about a dream he had, about the lake beneath a gray sky and the dark trees of the forest crowding close, how it seemed that the whole town was abandoned, and they lived together, the three of them, in a series of caves beneath the water, and—"It's hard to remember," he says, when he falters. "It's hard to describe." 

Clarke and Miller are patient. The day is long. There is no rush. 

"Sounds like a storm," Miller says, and Bellamy nods, but it's hard even to imagine a clouded evening sky when they are so nearly the center of the bright and yellow sun. 

Clarke leans back and into Bellamy's embrace. He's too warm but a comfort nevertheless, and she can feel him sometimes nosing into her hair or against her ear, like he's breathing her in. She wants to memorize this: his solid presence surrounding her. She wants to make this moment very small, fold it up and carry it with her in her pocket, wherever she goes, for the rest of her life. 

Miller's talking now about the book he's just finished; the rhythm of his words matches the rhythm of his feet through the water, and Clarke focuses in on the steady sound of his voice. She opens her eyes and looks out across the shimmering blue lake to the opposite shore. The neat rows of houses there. Cars passing by on the far road and on the road behind them. She thinks again of Bellamy's dream, the low notes of abandonment and solitude it conjures in her, the sense of being asleep, and waking to find something unnamable has gone, that desertion has crept in. And she feels that now she is asleep. Peacefully dreaming. Floating on tiny curlicues of pleasant waves. Unwilling to worry about the moment, still distant, of waking. 

* 

**[Bring It On Home ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAO0ib8a0dU) **

Bellamy doesn't hear the knock on his front door. He's got a low murmur of blues going in the background as he packs up his stuff, his shades half-drawn against the twilight, and he's not yet turned on either the overhead or his desk lamp, so his room is shadowy and dim. The outlines of all his misplaced objects remain uncertain. His small space is chaotic: half-folded clothes on the bed, piles of books on the desk, his suitcase open on the floor.  

He doesn't hear the knocking, but he does hear his sister's loud footsteps in the hall; Octavia makes a lot of noise for such a small person, and always has. He figures she's on her way to the kitchen or her bedroom, but then she stops outside his door and raps her knuckles against it three times, a low hollow of sound. 

"Yeah?" he calls. 

"Visitor for you," she answers. "Should I tell her to go away?" 

Bellamy's sitting on the edge of his bed, but he stands up when Octavia says _her_. He takes a half-step forward, then hesitates so long in answering that Octavia says, again, impatient: 

"Bell?" 

"Yeah," he says. "I mean—no. Let her in." 

He's still standing when Clarke slips in through the door. She comes in tentatively, as if she's still not sure she's allowed. He's embarrassed to see her in his tiny little room, in his one-story house, in the middle of this mess that, she might think, represents how he usually lives, and he wants to explain. But before he can, she tilts her head and smiles, thin, and asks, "How's the packing going?" She has her arms behind her back and she's leaning against the door, right against the doorknob, like she's ready to escape, or to block him if he should try to leave. 

He raises his arms, gestures out, then lets them fall again to his sides. "Badly," he answers. 

He can barely see her face in the low light. When he turns on his desk lamp, though, the effect is even worse: a splash of brightness on the right side of the room and a colony of shadows everywhere else. 

"You said a pretty quick goodbye yesterday," she says. 

"Yeah, I know, I was—I’ve been busy trying to get everything together. I was just stopping by to pick up my last check—" 

"Don't tell me you're that guy." 

His tongue feels swollen in his mouth, his throat dry, and he frowns at her, uncertain. "What do you mean 'that guy'?" 

"That jerk. Who leaves without saying goodbye." She pushes herself away from the door and takes a step toward him, but the distance between them still feels vast, so much broader for how easy it could be to cross the distance and gather her in his arms again. 

"I'm not—that's not what I was going to do," he answers, but it's weak. "I've just been putting it off. I don't know what to say." 

"When do you leave?" 

"Day after tomorrow." 

Clarke nods. "Really pushing that deadline," she says, and walks closer, and sits down tentatively on the edge of his bed. "Did you know your sister is just a little bit frightening?" 

Bellamy smiles. Some of the tension falls from his shoulders—this is easier, now, this abrupt change of topic, how he understands that she’s not angry but only equally lost. He pulls out his desk chair and turns it around, so he's sitting on it backwards with his arms crossed on the top. It’s easy to lean there and look at her and watch the shadows and the light pick out new details of her face, details he might have gone all this time never knowing, never memorizing, never even getting the chance to forget. 

"She's cultivating a dark and intimidating energy," he answers, then adds, "Her words. Not mine," and rolls his eyes fondly. He reaches out his hand and Clarke reaches out, too, and slides her fingers between his fingers. They watch their hands as if watching strangers' hands, fascinated by each other's touch. 

"I," Clarke starts. But she almost chokes on the word, and has to start again. "I am really going to miss you, Bellamy." She forms each word with a heartbreaking care, slips in a pause before his name.   

"I'm going to miss you, too." 

"But it would be stupid, right?" She looks at him, and he can't tell if her expression is sad, or hopeful. Perhaps a bit of both. "To pretend that this is something it's not?" 

Bellamy half shrugs. He's thinking that he does not want to let go of her hand, can't stand the thought of breaking this moment, of her walking out his door and not looking back. The summer ending, he can manage. The bracing fall winds and the changing leaves and the chillness in the air, and school, and new people, and the city—he's built himself up to all of this. He's ready. But Clarke. She's something else, the unnamable and the unknown, a thrill that passes like goosebumps up his skin, the waves along the shore, the spirits in the stars. 

"Fuck it," he says, and hardly notices her startled recoil as he stands. "Maybe it's more stupid to pretend that this _isn't_ something." 

Clarke's staring up at him, mouth open and brow furrowed. "I'm not sure," she says slowly, "that I know what that means."  

He kicks the chair aside, then takes her hands and pulls her to her feet; the distance is gone now; she is pressed close against him and he pushes her hair from her eyes and waits, waits for her to decide if she'll push him away.  

"I mean—let's keep seeing each other. Or calling and emailing and visiting each other, whatever." 

"Dating each other?" she asks, slightly teasing, and slips her arms around his waist. 

"If you must call it that,” he concedes. 

"Just wanted to know that we're on the same page." She leans up on her toes and brushes her lips against his lips, a hint, more than a kiss—maybe a promise, maybe a dare. 

"Just stay with me," he says, because that seems to be it: what he's wanted to say for a long time. 

Clarke nods. This time she kisses him properly and it lingers. "Yeah. Yes. And you stay with me and—who knows?" she leans in closer again, this last whispered in low, secret tones against his lips. "Maybe in a year—?" 

"Maybe." 

"Anything's possible." 

She steps forward again, pressed against him, leaning up into his kiss. His fingers slide up to tangle in her hair and his other hand steadies between her shoulder blades. He does not want to let go. She will not let him. The notes of low blues sway and linger and the light outside fades. Clarke is smiling and he feels the joyful curve of her mouth, feels the same yearning in himself that he feels from her. He breathes in the moment, hoping it will live beyond itself, become a part of him: a last sweet high, a last haunting glimmer of sharp summer sun.  

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Feedback is always appreciated. You can also find me on [tumblr](http://kinetic-elaboration.tumblr.com/), desperately waiting for fall weather.


End file.
